4. Which of the following best describes how the writer feels about
stage schools?
A. He thinks highly of
what they have to offer.
B. He favours an early start in the training of performing arts.
C. He feels
uncomfortable about children putting on night shows.
D. He doubts the
standard of ordinary education they have reached.
E
Experts have put forward detailed plans for a tunnel to join Taiwan with the
Chinese mainland.
The shortest proposed route would be 126 kilometers---more than
twice the length of the English Channel Tunnel. And the longest proposed route
would be 207 kilometers.
A recent conference in Xiamen, Fujian Province brought together
more than 70 experts. The event was co-sponsored(共同发起)
by universities from Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.
Fujian is the province where both proposed routes would begin.
There is no direct passenger access between the mainland and Taiwan by air or sea
at the moment.
Experts say that it is better to start research sooner rather than
later, although there is a lack of government funding. There are no technical
problems to build a Taiwan
tunnel. But it will require an improved political relationship across the
Straits(海峡).
A professor of Tsinghua University
said, "A special feature of huge projects is that the period of
preparation is longer than the period of construction."
For example, he said, the English Channel Tunnel took 14 years of
planning and had been discussed for two centuries. And preparations for the
huge Three Gorges(三峡) dam on the Yangtze River began in
the 1950s.
The Xiamen
conference focused on the longest southern route, which would use the
Taiwan-controlled islands of Jinmen and Penghu as stepping stones.
The first stage of the new project could be a bridge to cross the five
kilometres between Xiamen and Jinmen. This would mean that travelling from Xiamen
to Jinmen by car
would only take five minutes.
The longest tunnel now being planned anywhere in the world is the
54-kilometre land tunnel to link Lyon in France
with Turin in Italy. The tunnel will not be completed
until 2015-2020.
